


Icarus

by deathwailart



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Gore, Slavery, Torture, Violence, Wingfic, Witches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-14
Updated: 2011-08-14
Packaged: 2017-10-22 14:59:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/239288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathwailart/pseuds/deathwailart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Short story I worked on earlier in the summer.  It was going to be part of something larger but I've lost the motivation for it however this piece stands on its own.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Icarus

**Author's Note:**

> Short story I worked on earlier in the summer. It was going to be part of something larger but I've lost the motivation for it however this piece stands on its own.

He had wings once. When he first met her. Beautiful things, tawny brown and white and grey, soft and smooth and perfectly groomed. He had them when the witch caught him and stuck him in her iron cage with its white painted bars. Barely tall enough for him to stand in, his wings crushed to his sides. He wanted to rip his feathers out but he couldn't, could only reach the food or water in front of him.

The witch ripped some of them out anyway.

\---

The witch came to his bars, an angry child. Ill-tempered and nasty, spoiled. She rattled the cage as much as she could, strong despite her tiny and malnourished frame and the weight of the cage and him in it. She bared her teeth at him, hissed, cattish, all wild eyes and jagged, crooked teeth. Her nails were long and sharp. She scratched him, scored lines down his cheeks and at the sensitive skin between his wings. He was unable to shy away from her touch and he scrunched his eyes shut and she spat and hissed all the louder, banged her hand on the bars and sent stale water sloshing over him.

"Bad birdie."

She left him for a week until the water was hot and started to taste of dust. But she came back. She didn't want birdie to die.

  
He refused to look at her. He refused to speak to her. In his mind she became an vicious little stray with the tip of her ear missing, patchy mangy fur.

She didn't like that.

He didn't care. He wanted out of this miserable little cage. He craved the sunlight and the wind and the smell of nature all around him and all he got was a sliver of sunlight through the gap in the boarded up window, the howl of storms around him. He pressed himself forward as far as he could and when she was gone he wept. Wept and keened and cried and it wasn't until later that he learned she watched him from the door, watched him stretch his arms out through the spaces between the cage bars, clawing fruitlessly at the air.

He learned she watched by accident; she laughed when he let out a particularly anguished sob. The door creaked on its hinges and she sat in an untidy sprawl, legs spread wide and she was such an ungainly ugly thing to look at but he found himself unable to look away. His heart fluttered as he watched her through wide eyes, tears still clinging to his eyelashes as his breath hitched and his chest heaved, wings fluttering. She crawled across, dirt streaking her clothes and she scraped her skirt and tights and knee on a nail, blood smearing right up to the cage, staining the bar she pressed against as she pulled herself up. He tried to tip his head out of her reach but she stretched her skinny little arms right in and cupped his face, dirty ragged nails catching his hair as she brushed at his tears.

"Ssh, ssh, ssh, ssh pretty birdie. Pretty little birdie." Her voice was higher but creaky and she smelled of dank and mildew and decay and he flinched at her touch, eyes falling closed with fresh tears. "Does my pretty birdie miss the sky? Does he miss getting to fly?" She crooned and he opened his eyes, imploring her. He hadn't spoken in so long he didn't know if he still had words anymore. "Oh pretty birdie, mama will let you out."

His heart leapt into his throat and she moved away, circled around and he found his voice when she found the feathers right at the base of his wings and yanked. Hard. Blood welled up and he choked.

She came back, feathers in her hands, feathers in her mouth, blood and spit on her hands and chin. The feathers she threw in his face and as she cackled madly she spat the feathers at him. She spun, her bare feet sending thick clouds of dust up as the feathers twirled and floated in the air and her arms clattered in to the bars.

"Look at the feathers birdie! Look at them dancing! Look at them flying!"

She skipped from the room, laughing like a madwoman and he screamed his frustration at the ceiling.

\---

"Can you speak birdie?" The witch – it was the only way he thought of her – asked as lay before him, facing the cage and drawing symbols in the dirt. "Can you sing?"

He refused to answer her.

"Birdie," she whined and rolled onto her back, looking up at him, knotted greasy hair spilling into the cage. He edged his toes away from it. "Birdie say mama. Sing for mama. Sing mama a pretty song. Pretty song for a pretty girl from a pretty birdie."

He wanted to say she wasn't pretty and that she would have no songs from him and that she wasn't his 'mama'. But that would mean talking with her and she didn't deserve his words. He would rather die than submit to her whims.

"Birdie," she grabbed for his ankle and again he jumped at her touch, jostling the still healing spots where the feathers had been torn out, "if you sing and talk to mama, she'll let you outside."

And it was a lie. Or there would be strings attached but outside. The longed for place. He closed his eyes and went to the place inside his head of birdsong and insect chirping, of wind in leaves and branches, of cool rain. His wings fluttered as much as they could in anticipation.

"Please birdie. Please, say mama, silly little birdie. Mama."

He cleared his throat and she rolled over again with a thump, rising up on her knobbly little knees. He looked down at her eyes the colour of dirty old dishwater, eyes too large for her ugly little face with her stained and crooked teeth and nose that was too narrow. She had the pinched and hungry look of a stray. Of a thing he had seen standing over the body of a dead bird, devouring it with no remorse.

She could so easily do that to him. But he desperately wanted to be outside.

"Mama," he croaked and she made a strange gurgle of happiness, "mama," he repeated, "mama please, please mama, let the birdie fly." His words deteriorated into a string of babbling nonsense and she jumped up and smiled, stroking his face and shushing him.  
  
"Mama's good birdie, mama's smart special birdie. Mama will let you out."

\---

He knew there would be a catch.

\---

He woke to whispered words in a language he didn't understand and gentle tugging sensations. He grumbled, still exhausted, still unaccustomed to sleeping in this claustrophobic cage. A voice hushed him back to sleep and he imagined it was one of his flock, grooming him the way they so often did. A chin on his shoulder, slender fingers smoothing feathers and removing any dirt of parasites. Sometimes, if he sat very still, little wild birds would hop up and he would have to remain still as they skittered about, tiny searching beaks looking for food.

The screech of the cage door woke him fully. The witch stood, smiling nervously with her hands outstretched for his and he almost fell when he woke because he hadn't done anything more than stand in place for days and he felt shaky, no doubt looking like a newborn fawn and he collapsed to the floor. She went down with him and he spread his wings wide, flapped them and arched his back because it was so good to feel this free. To be able to move. To sit and flex and wrap his wings about himself. He'd need to smooth the feathers, pluck out the ones that were bent and out of shape.

That was when he felt them, cords and strings and thin link chains hanging down his wings and he craned his head to look at them and they danced up and over his head and into the witch's hands.

"Mama doesn't want her birdie to fly away from her, does she?"

He hung his head but she was still smaller, still weaker, still fragile. He was bigger and more powerful than she and maybe if he took off he could drag her up even if those chains and cords cut him and tore flesh from him. Freedom was worth sacrifice. So he followed her out as she lead him by the bindings draped over his shoulder, up through a house that stank of decay, full of clutter and broken things and strange objects on every surface. Tanks and cages lined the walls with wild beasts and odd things that looked at him and he couldn't bring himself to look back at them, not when he was being allowed the freedom denied to them.

"Come on birdie-birdie!" She gave a tug and he hissed; there were hooks, hooks in his flesh, hooks beneath his feathers and when he tried to drag her with him it would _hurt_. He steeled himself for the first glimpse of the outdoors but when it hit him, he was unprepared.

The sun was blinding after so much darkness and he squinted, arm over his eyes as he blinked and squinted until he adjusted and then he ran. She ran too. She laughed. She thought it a game, he realised, she thought her birdie was playing with her. Well let her. His bare feet thudded over sparse grass, cool and slick after bare floorboards and the wind whistled by his ears and his wings gave a thunderous flap and his feet were no longer on the ground. The chains had some give and he tested his limits and then began to pull. The hooks sunk in, stinging but he ground his teeth together, set his jaw and moved with more purpose. His wings began to beat hard and below him she gave ineffectual tugs at his chains but she had no amount of strength compared to him. The stinging became a burning, searing heat and his wings trembled and he was sure he was bleeding and he was definitely crying.

He fought against her, tugged and strained with all his might until the chains began to curl around him, restraining vines and serpents. He was falling.

\---

He was strapped into the cage, wrists and ankles to the bars, damaged wings extended out. She snarled and ranted and howled in his face and all around him, a whirling dervish and force of nature. Fury and venom, lashing out. He'd broken his wings before and they always healed but she was ripping out clumps of feathers, the chains still sunk in on the cruel hooks. Her filthy nails raked down his raw skin and she pressed down on where the bones were crushed.

He sobbed raggedly and thought he might throw up or pass out.

"Bad. Bad birdie. Mama let you out. Mama let you stretch your pretty wings even though you have been so, so bad to mama. Mama only wants to take care of you." She grasped where his wings attached to his body above his shoulder blades and lifted herself off her feet, supporting herself on him as his knees buckled. He couldn't move, couldn't shake her off, could only scream himself hoarse and then silent.

With one last vindictive yank she released her grip on him.

"If mama can't have nice things, birdie can't have nice things."

\---

She returned to him with a hacksaw. She sawed his wings off. He vomited, pissed himself, blacked out and wrenched his joints. His fingernails bent back and off.

She showed him his wings when he was done and left him, stinking and bleeding and broken, the half bald malformed wings, blood running down his back.

The wings were left to rot before him and his wounds festered, foul putrid stench and maggots and flies writhing and roiling but he simply hung his head. She cleaned him up, brought him food and water and cut his bindings. For the first time he sank to the bottom of his cage and hugged his arms about himself, a poor imitation of what he had lost and rocked himself back and forth, a man haunted and possessed. Fever set in and he shivered and shook and hallucinated. His flock, flying away, calling and crying for him as he lay on the ground atop his mangled wings. He stretched his hand up, in the fever dream and in his prison, calling for them to help him, to carry him away but he could not make them hear him.

He gave up and waited to die.

\---

He didn't die. She was determined and she cleaned him up and took him out of the cage and into her bed, cleaning him up and feeding him fresh food and cool water, rocking him and cradling him to the bosom she lacked. She sang, trilled in her out of tune scrape of a voice, petting his curls, combing them to keep them free of snarls and knots. He screamed at night and thrashed and fought. Nightmares, terrible beasts and her hurting him. Her snapping the necks of his flock. Smashing eggs of all sorts of birds before him. Setting nests on fire. Chaining and caging all of them and making them part of her monstrous menagerie. She loosed the other beasts and let them devour his flock as he watched, bound and on his knees as she knelt beside him and cupped his chin, whispering all the while.

"This is what you did. All you. Bad birdie. Had to punish my naughty birdie. Had to make him see that he always obeys his mama."

He woke weeping.

\---

"I can give you wings again," she told him at night as she stroked the scars on his back, scars that never really healed, not with her being so fascinated with them, with where his wings had once been connected to him. He was glad he was unable to see them because they felt ugly, the skin tight. She opened them up and sewed them shut over and over and painted symbols all over him in blood, sometimes with fingers and sometimes with feathers. She braided them to his hair and painted over her lips and his and pressed dry, close-mouthed chaste kisses. "Oh birdie, do what mama says. Be mama's beautiful baby birdie forever. You can fly but you will always be my birdie. Always. Just mama's."

She lifted a doll, a poppet, sackcloth and feathers, his name – how did she know that, he had never told her his name – stitched into it. She lifted two big feathers with decomposing skin clinging to them and held them to the poppet.

"Look, it's mama's birdie. Mama's little Icarus." She giggled and rubbed her nose against his. "Mama can stitch the wings back on her birdie because birdie has such a clever mama. Birdie has a _good_ mama. Kind and loving and so special. Be mama's good birdie?"

He trembled beneath her. She could crush him. She could make him hurt. This spiteful, hate-filled thing resting on his back. His head dropped down into the pillows. Oh he wanted his wings. He missed them. He would lose himself and his mind if he remained tethered to the ground, rattling around her big empty house, feeding all the little beasts that scuttled or shied or snapped at his fingers. Even if he wore her chains...he would like to fly. He could be mama's good boy.

"Please," he whispered, the puff of the 'p' and the sibilant hiss of the 's'. "Please mama."  
  
"Do you mean it?" She flopped down heavily on him, stretching out, every filthy tainted inch of her sinking into him as surely as her hooks and stitches. "Mama's good birdie forever?"  
  
"Yes mama," he turned his head and smiled, at least it felt like a smile, tears and wobbling bottom lip, "Mama's good birdie. Mama's birdie that will sing so prettily and tell her stories and sit by mama. Birdie will fly when mama lets him."  
  
"My good sweet Icarus birdie. So good, so sweet." She raked his wounds open and he let himself go utterly limp and boneless. "Tethered and tied and obedient birdie."  
  
"Always, always, always."  
  
"Sing to your mama?"

He took a tremulous breath, lifted himself up and allowed himself to think before the words started spilling out of him. Songs of his flock, the flock he would never see again lest they become what he had become, tied to a cretin, a monster, a beast with no soul.

She stitched the poppet, he sang for her.

\---

He has wings once more. Beautiful things, tawny brown and white and grey, soft and smooth and perfectly groomed. Chains dangle down from those wings and tinkle little bells when he moves about the house and when he flies. Mama holds those chains between her fingers and laughs herself dizzy at her favourite pet, her beautiful broken bird with his big sad eyes and his shy manner, his terrified smiles. He is her best pet, her most prized thing. She will never let her little Icarus fly too close to the sun again; mama doesn't want to hurt her baby. She tells him these things before she bids him to sing her to sleep. He has a new cage for night, a huge thing in her room and she sleeps curled on the floor of it as he sits on a bar, the chains locked to the bars, a reminder. She is in every pore of him now, every inch of him is so wholly dominated by her.

He is mama's beautiful birdie and she is his kind, benevolent mama. He sings to her, eats fruit from her hand. She lets him live.

One day, she will have a flock.

 


End file.
